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Roman Naukratis and its Alexandrian context

Ross I. Thomas

A recent British Museum Research Project, ‘Naukratis:
The Greeks in Egypt,’ and the survey and excavation of the
Lake Mareotis hinterland of Alexandria by the Southampton
University ‘Lake
Mareotis Research Project’ provide interesting and contrasting
insights into the fates of these two important ‘Greek’ cities in
Egypt. While our understanding of the limited published Ptolemaic
material has been hindered by researchers’ focus on the 7th-century
BC founding of Naukratis, Roman material remains largely
unregistered or unpublished in the 70 museums around the world that
house artefacts from Naukratis. The British Museum’s ‘Naukratis:
The Greeks in Egypt’ project will bring together all 15,000
Naukratis objects into one online catalogue, allowing for
comparisons to be made with other settlements and between different
periods. Along the shore of Lake Mareotis, a number of satellite
settlements appeared around Alexandria, including a significant
late 4th- to early 5th-century AD boom in domestic settlement along
its shores.

This study will present comparisons
between the results of both studies and how they have helped refine
our understanding of the contacts, compositions and fates of both
settlements between 30 BC and AD 639. This is also a useful case
study for illustrating the value of digitisation and research
collection-based museum studies, and how the rediscovery of
19th-century excavated material continues to inform current
research in our field.